Stonewall Riots
The confrontations between police and demonstrators at the Stonewall Inn in New York City the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 mark the beginning of the modern glbtq movement for equal rights.

Gay Liberation Front
Formed soon after the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the short-lived but influential Gay Liberation Front brought a new militancy to the movement that became known as gay liberation.

Leather Culture
"Leather" is a blanket term for a large array of sexual preferences, identities, relationship structures, and social organizations loosely tied together by the thread of what is conventionally understood as sadomasochistic sex.

Anthony, Susan B.
Although best known for her crusade for women's suffrage, Susan B. Anthony spoke out on a range of feminist issues.

Africa: Sub-Saharan, Pre-Independence
With reports from hundreds of sub-Saharan African locales of male-male sexual relations and from about fifty of female-female sexual relations, it is clear that same-sex sexual relations existed in traditional African societies, though varying in forms and in the degree of public acceptance

Androgyny
Androgyny, a psychological blending of gender traits, has long been embraced by strong women, soft men, members of queer communities, and others who do not easily fit into traditionally defined gender categories.

Russia
A cultural crossroads between Asia and Europe, Russia has a long, rich, and often violent heritage of varied influences and stark confrontations in regard to its patterns of same-sex love.

On April 16, 2012, Susan Ungaro, President of the James Beard Foundation, accepted the "Distinguished Citizen Award" from the Boy Scouts of America for her work with the Foundation in supporting culinary education. However, within hours of Michelangelo Signorile's pointing out the Boy Scouts' history of bigotry, Ungaro rescinded her acceptance of the award. The incident reveals something about the toxicity of the BSA's discriminatory policies and about the power of the gay blogosphere to call attention to them.

Ungaro, former editor of Family Circle and sometime judge on Bravo's Top Chefs television show, was honored by the Boy Scouts of America at a fundraiser in Jersey City, New Jersey for her work with the James Beard Foundation, which has, over the past 20 years, awarded nearly $4 million in financial aid to high school students and adults seeking a culinary school education. According to Jersey Journal's Adam Robb, Ungaro happily accepted the BSA's Distinguished Citizen Award.

Signorile wrote, "It's troubling enough that the leader of any group, let alone one that considers itself sophisticated and tasteful, would accept an award from an organization that does not allow 'avowed homosexuals' as members because they are not 'morally straight and clean in thought, word and deed.' It is the Boy Scouts' choice, as a private entity, to ban gays (the Supreme Court has upheld this policy), just as the Augusta National Golf Club may legally ban women. That, however, surely doesn't make it right, nor does it mean that anyone must give it legitimacy by accepting an award from an organization that the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) notes is 'one of the only cultural institutions to categorically discriminate against LGBT Americans' and sends a 'dangerous' message."

"But in this case it's even more problematic," Signorile continued, "simply because of James Beard himself and what he stood for. Often called the father of American cuisine, Beard was a chef and cookbook author who mentored generations of food enthusiasts through much of the 20th century, right up until the time of his death in 1985. He was also openly gay in a time when it was almost impossible to be so, writing in his memoir, '[B]y the age of seven I knew I was gay.' And Beard experienced the discrimination that Jennifer Tyrrell did at the hands of the Boy Scouts, booted out of Reed College in his hometown of Portland in 1922 because of his homosexuality."

Signorile contacted Ungaro through her public relations representative, who replied in an e-mail as follows: "Susan Ungaro accepted the award to support the dozens of New Jersey chefs who give of their time and resources year after year to raise money to send deserving at risk youth to camp."

Signorile characterized the explanation as "a pretty lame excuse, considering that there are many ways to support needy kids, as well as New Jersey chefs, without taking the Distinguished Citizen Award from a group that discriminates against some of those kids. After all, what about the at-risk kids who are gay but are rejected by the Boy Scouts?"

Signorile further observed that though he does not know Ungaro personally, "I can't imagine that a respected leader in the gay-dominated foodie world, whose own organization has celebrated gay culture, would knowingly legitimize a group that stigmatizes gays, just as I can't imagine her accepting an award from a group that bans blacks--even if that group held a yearly fundraiser to benefit needy white kids."

So he posed two other questions to Ungaro's publicist: 1) would she take an award from a group that bans African Americans?; and 2) "will Ungaro now do the right thing and return this award to the Boy Scouts?"

Within hours of the appearance of Signorile's article on Huffington Post, Ungaro announced that she was indeed rescinding her acceptance of the award.

She issued this statement: "While I support all the poverty and hunger-fighting programs of the Boy Scouts of America, including sending at-risk youth to camp, your report brought to my attention that accepting the Distinguished Citizen Award implied I support their anti-gay policy, which I absolutely do not. When I accepted the honor, I was focused on supporting the New Jersey chefs and restaurant community."